People suck up to vacuum cleaners

Study finds deep attachments

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, October 3, 2007

ATLANTA -- People give them nicknames, worry when they signal for help and sometimes even treat them like trusted pets.

A newly released Georgia Tech study shows that some Roomba owners become deeply attached to the robotic vacuums and suggests there's a measure of public readiness to accept additional robots in the house -- even flawed ones.

"They're more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it," said Beki Grinter, an associate professor at the school's College of Computing. "It sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn't have to be as reliable."

Grinter decided to study the devices after she saw online pictures of people dressing up their Roombas, disc-shaped, self-directed vacuums made by iRobot Corp.

"This sort of notion that someone would dress a vacuum cleaner seemed strange," she said. "A lot more was going on."

More than 2 million of the robots have been sold, although early versions suffered motor failures and other problems after intensive use.

Grinter enlisted doctoral student Ja Young Sung, who studies "emotional design" -- the theory that certain types of design can influence consumers to become emotionally attached.

First, Sung Young monitored an online forum devoted to Roombas, which revealed people who named them and traveled with them and one owner who introduced the machine to his parents.

Others reported their efforts to "Roomba-ize" their homes so the robot can roam the floors more easily. Some bought new rugs, precleaned the floors to clear the robot's route and purchased new refrigerators with a higher clearance so their machines could clean under them easier.

Next she studied 30 committed Roomba users and found that 21 had named their robots. Sixteen others referred to the robot as "he," arbitrarily assigning the robot a gender.

The third phase of the study, presented last week at the Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Austria, focused on more traditional users. Polling 379 U.S. users, it found that some would preclean their homes before using the machine, and that it seemed to make males more excited about the chore of vacuuming.

And that could have profound implications for the future of vacuuming.

"Forty years of women's liberation hasn't done much for the redistribution of vacuuming labor," Grinter said.